Buckland woman arrested on heroin, child endangerment charges

TURNERS FALLS — A woman was arrested after allegedly using heroin at a local park with two children in her car.

Candace Caswell, 34, of 15 School St., Buckland, was arrested Monday on charges of possession of heroin and reckless endangerment of children.

She was found when police responded to Unity Park at about 5:54 p.m. for a report of a woman slumped over the steering wheel of a Honda Fit with two children inside, according to a police report by Patrolman Joshua Hoffman.

When Hoffman approached the car, Caswell looked up at him, turned toward the back seat and reached into a McDonald’s bag, he wrote.

In the back seat were a 23-month-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, who were picked up by family members after Caswell’s arrest, according to the report.

Hoffman noticed that her pupils were constricted, a sign of opiate use, and asked her if she had taken any drugs, the patrolman wrote. She said she had taken Suboxone earlier in the day, and had last used heroin a month ago, according to the report.

Hoffman then noticed a small white heroin packet in the car’s center console, which Caswell told him was already used, Hoffman wrote. She told him there may be unused needles in her purse, and Hoffman found 17 full heroin packets under her purse on the passenger’s seat, he wrote. Inside the purse were nine unused needles, according to the report.

When Hoffman looked inside the McDonald’s bag he’d seen Caswell reach into, he found a single used syringe with some liquid still inside, according to the report. Once it was found, Caswell told him she had used heroin at about noon, wrote Hoffman, but fresh, bleeding puncture wounds near her heel led him to believe she injected the drug while at the park with the children.

In 2013, Franklin County residents filled prescriptions for 2,877,031 doses of highly abusable schedule two opioids, a classification including oxycodone, the principal ingredient in the tradename compounds Percocet …
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